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US President George W. Bush arrived in Russia from Prague, where he had attended a summit of the NATO heads of state and governments.

Mr Putin and Mr Bush discussed the prospects of NATO enlargement, relevant aspects of its partnership with Russia—in particular, in the Russia-NATO Council, and the adaptation of NATO to new threats and challenges. Mr Putin stressed the importance of giving practical content to the mechanism of the Russia-NATO “twenty”.

They analysed many aspects of Russian-US partnership in trade, the economy and high technologies, and the maintenance of strategic stability. They discussed the fight against terrorism—not only its military and law enforcement aspects, but also the efforts against financing terrorism and security guarantees for weapons of mass destruction.

The Presidents exchanged opinions on urgent international problems with special attention given to the situation in Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Attending the talks on the Russian side were Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov, Minister of Defence Sergei Ivanov and Security Council Secretary Vladimir Rushailo; and on the American side, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser.

The Presidents summarised the talks with a joint statement on Iraq, in which they called on its leaders to urgently, fully and unconditionally fulfil their disarmament pledges in strict compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1441.

The Presidents also made a statement supporting the development of bilateral energy dialogue. Of major help in drafting the document was the 1st Russian-US Business Energy Summit, which was held in Houston, Texas, on October 1–2, 2002. The statement resolutely supported Russian and US companies’ search for new lucrative fields of partnership and efforts to remove obstacles for trade and investment. The parties highlighted the first-ever Russian exports to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a symbolic instance of closer bilateral energy partnership.

Mr Putin and Mr Bush addressed journalists after the summit. President Putin highly assessed the talks and said he was sure that global efforts in the fight against terrorism would be effective.

Concerning European security, Mr Putin said he did not think that NATO expansion was necessary. However, Russia was taking the opinion of the White House into consideration and hoped for the positive development of its relations with all NATO countries. He did not rule out closer partnership with the bloc if its activities were in line with Russian interests.